"The Pakistani prime minister will not have to cry like the Lebanese prime minister." So promised the incumbent Pakistan Air Force chief some weeks ago while bragging about the country's military prowess, particularly its air power, as a means of countering any aggression against the state. The context was the brutal Israeli war against Lebanon and Fouad Siniora shedding tears at the destruction of his country in a summit meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Beirut.

Clearly army chief and President General Pervez Musharraf doesn't share the air chief's confidence that Pakistan can withstand a major aggression, especially if it can possibly be from the United States -- a friend who when angry can be your worst enemy. Ask a Shah-day Iran, an early Saddam-era Iraq or a Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Perhaps in his most sensational 'revelation' in his autobiography, Musharraf claims that within a couple of days after 9/11 then US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan to the Stone Age if it did not help it with its plans -- to bomb Afghanistan to the Stone Age.

The Stone Age

Armitage flatly denied issuing any Stone Age threat declaring in an interview with CNN: "Never did I threaten to use any military force. I was not authorised to." He did, however confirm he made "a series of non-negotiable demands on Pakistan" in a bid to secure its cooperation in the US assault on Afghanistan's then Taliban leaders.

What did Musharraf think of the threat? "I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf told CBS TV in an interview. A controversy has erupted over the appropriateness or otherwise of the Stone Age remark and whether Pakistan's response was too hasty or undignified or not. The Stone Age disclosure came in a TV interview ahead of the book launch itself and many seem to think it was calculated to boost sales of the book -- if so, it certainly did the trick, all the more so when Musharraf in his capacity as a visiting head of state, on an official visit to the White House, refused to answer a press conference question related to the Stone Age comment. There he said he was "honour bound to (his publisher) Simon and Schuster not to say anything on the subject (before the book launch)."

With us or against us?

The bizarreness of this apart a search for truth, as Musharraf sees it, should lead to his autobiography. In his book Musharraf says the first contact from the US administration with him on 9/11 came the next morning as he huddled with his aides in the Governor House in Karachi. "My military secretary told me that the US Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, was on the phone. I said I would call back later but he insisted that I come out of the meeting and take the call. Powell was quite candid. 'You are either with us or against us.' I took this as a blatant ultimatum. However, contrary to some published reports, the conversation did not get into specifics. I told him we were with the United States against terrorism, having suffered from it for years, and would fight along with his country against it. We did not negotiate anything. I had time to think through exactly what might happen next. When I was back in Islamabad the next day, our director general of Inter Services Intelligence (General Mahmood), who happened to be in Washington, told me on the phone about his meeting with the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. In what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made, Armitage added to what Colin Powell had said to me and told the director general not only what we had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we choose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age. This was a shockingly barefaced threat, but it was obvious that the United States had decided to hit back, and hit back hard."

As Musharraf points out, Powell himself was quiet candid and presented a stark choice before him: support us or be counted with our enemy. Considering that the US had just been grievously wounded and had begun assessing a response, this choice before Pakistan should not be seen anything other than part of a standard US calculation of options before it, including identifying who it could count on in the region where Pakistan lies. However, if Armitage indeed said what Musharraf says he said, it represented not just a crude exhibition of affordable state arrogance but a climb down to crass indifference to a traditional friend and its interests and capabilities.

Righteous rage

Some might argue that Armitage issued the Stone Age threat simply because Pakistan was virtually the only state with diplomatic ties with a regime harbouring America's worst new enemy and the pressure had to be piled on Islamabad to assess whether it will be an ally or a co-target of the righteous American rage. Indeed Musharraf himself bails Armitage out thus in his book: "(The eventual decision of siding with the US) I made for the sake of my country. Richard Armitage's undiplomatic language, regrettable as it was, had nothing to do with my decision. The United States would do what it had to do in its national interest, and we would do what we had to do in ours. Self-interest and self-preservation were the basis of this decision. Needless to say, though, I felt very frustrated with Armitage's remarks. It goes against the grain of a soldier not to be able to tell anyone giving an ultimatum to go forth and multiply, or words to that effect. I have to say, though, that later I found Armitage to be a wonderful person and a good friend of Pakistan."

In effect Musharraf is saying that while it was unbecoming of the US to be disrespectful to a friend -- one that helped it win one of its biggest battles, against communism, and yet was left to suffer a terrible blowback. In the end all was well since he arrived at the conclusion that not only would Pakistan not be able to respond negatively to the US without suffering terribly for it, Washington's goals actually represented major gains for Islamabad.

That may be so -- and the decision to ditch the Taliban cannot be faulted with on ideological grounds as far as Pakistani interests are concerned -- the question that needs to be answered is whether the US will continue to treat Pakistan as it does because Islamabad can always bend to Washington's interests even if they may clash with its own? After all, to popularise a 'believer's war' in the 1980s against the 'godless Reds' in Afghanistan Pakistan agreed to radicalise itself and in this decade to counter religious extremism in Afghanistan Pakistan has agreed to secularise itself -- both times in greater US interests than Pakistan's, if the fallouts are anything to go about.

Wargaming

What if tomorrow US thinks Iran needs to be attacked because Tehran's clerical regime 'is just as bad' as the erstwhile Taliban's? Will Musharraf the soldier again wargame the US and reach the conclusion that his army can't possibly take on the American military might and take yet another decision in "national interest" to ditch another ally?

The deeper issue here is not institutional interest to remain in power masqueraded as national interest but a subject Musharraf has not even touched in this context: popular legitimacy. Is it any surprise that Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Nasrallah defy the same US might and its proxy allies around Iran, Venezuela and Lebanon without batting an eyelid? The difference between them and Musharraf is that they have popular legitimacy and support while in Pakistan it is not the parliamentary leader Shaukat Aziz but the army leader who takes the real decisions.

Is it any wonder, then, that the only time the US threatened to bomb a country back to the Stone Age other than Pakistan was Vietnam. At least Vietnam put up a heroic and ultimately successful fight that still gives the US nightmares.

The female students of the Punjab University, carrying the Holy Quran and placards saying that they would not let the management promote vulgarity on the campus, protested on September 6, 2006 in front of the vice-chancellor's office against the University's decision to launch music classes -- and against the Punjab Governor's comparing universities in his province with the universities in western countries.

According to a newspaper report, Islami Jamiat Talba Nazim Nasrullah Goraya warns of dire consequences if a musicology department is launched in the varsity because it is against Islam and the ideology of Pakistan. "The government is imposing secular and un-Islamic values on the youth, especially students, by exercising its will through retired generals. The government is promoting obscenity under the banner of enlightened moderation."

That is a true reflection of the conservative mindset dominating scenes at the Punjab University. But Professor Shaista Sirajuddin, Dean of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at the Punjab University, maintains that "to equate performing arts to vulgarity reflects a narrow, ignorant and utterly uncultured mindset. People possessing such a mindset will read vulgarity in the finest works of art."

She strongly believes that cultural activity must be encouraged at the varsity: "Besides imparting education, a university should culture the creative minds of young students."

Prof. Sirajuddin recollects that the varsity administration has been pondering on starting a music department for a long time. According to her, the final push came from the Punjab Governor earlier in the year when he stressed on the significance of the arts and urged the Punjab University to initiate culture-oriented programmes. "A part of enlightened moderation or not, setting up a department for music is a creditable notion as long as it is implemented in total."

After almost 35 years of association with the Punjab University, Sirajuddin is certain that the officials will have to work on it diligently. "PU does have a long history of backtracking and submitting to the retrogressive influences exercised by the Jamaat activists."

But it seems that PU means business. The musicology department is all set to start classes from Octber 6, 2006, with 10 students, out of which 2 are girls. "A total of 22 students applied, out of which 10 were selected for the two-year masters programme," Shahnawaz Zaidi, Principal Institute of Arts and Design at the Punjab University informed the News on Sunday.

At this point one is curious about the selection criteria for the masters degree when the varsity does not offer classes in music at the bachelors level. "Music was taught as a subject at the varsity till the '50s when the classes discontinued. But students can enroll as private candidates for music as an elected subject."

When selecting the students for its brand new department, the faculty looked for a basic understanding of music among applicants. "We picked students who we thought had either developed an interest in music at an early age or those who simply understood minor complexities of sur," he explains.

The faculty comprises practitioners of classical music, including Rustum Fateh Ali Khan, son of popular classical singer Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, Jamshed Chishti, a ghazal singer and a master in Persian Literature, Irshad Khokhar, a key board player, Raza Shaukat, a tabla player, to name a few. A British professor William Keith Timmney, who has studied at Cambridge and taught at several educational institutions in Britain, Turkey and Egypt, has been invited to join the faculty as well. "The teachers have presently been appointed for two semesters. Next year more expert musicians will be hired. This is primarily due to financial constraints and not becuase of apprehensions regarding the success and continuity of the programme," says Zaidi.

Zaidi further explains that for the first two semesters the focus will be on classical music, with special emphasis on original compositions. "The curriculum incorporates folk and sufi music as well as the philosophy and psychology of the subject," he says.

Initiating a musicology department at institutions of higher learning is indeed a daunting task, given that music has remained at a low for decades and is still considered a disreputable profession by some conservative elements in our society. Consequently, educational institutions offering music as a subject are few and relatively new. Also, misconceptions abound regarding the split between music and musicology. Music is generally understood as a subject that focuses on practical music. But with the addition of 'ology' comes academic content in terms of text, history and research. Musicology etymologically means music words or words about music.

"Musicology is an academic discipline. It treats music as a subject which has organic linkages with other disciplines like philosophy, religion, forces of history, sociology. Fine arts, performing arts, and social and physical sciences are as if colours of one spectrum," says Sarwat Ali, who teaches musicology at the National College of Arts.

Musician-composer Arshad Mahmud agrees: "Musicology deals with the scientific knowledge applied to music. Whereas music encompasses the craft of playing music." Mahmud is currently associated with the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) in Karachi.

This lack of understanding of the gap between music and musicology is a great problem. Based on his experience with the musicology department at the National College of Arts, Ali maintains that students at the time of admission have no idea what they are getting into because music is considered to be the practice of music. "Students undoubtedly are more interested in practical music than the theoretical aspect of it," he adds.

"In the initial stage, the College faced all sorts of problems from assimilating resource material to attracting bright young students to designing the curriculum. The challenge faced by the officials was whether to wait endlessly or to start a department and see how it develops. Perhaps the problems are rooted in the fact that all over the world the teaching of music is a long haul -- sometimes the courses run over a ten year period, and admit young people," says Ali.

Arshad Mahmud however feels that it's the state's responsibility to provide a learning ground to talented students wishing to master practical music. "NAPA gets students in loads. Luring students is not a problem. The real problem is finding trained teachers."

This corroborates with Sarwat Ali's view that "there is not one academically qualified individual in the whole of Pakistan, and even at NCA where a four year degree programme is offered to students, the faculty comprises self-styled musicologists."

He strongly believes that music should be taught in schools and then the students should make it to the college and university level. "The only methodology in Pakistan of teaching music is the ustad-shagird nexus."

There is plenty of prejudice against music -- social and religious. It is not considered a profession, a secure one at least. Arshad Mahmud says that hundreds of thousands of unknown practising musicians are surviving in Pakistan. "Most of them seek success in appreciation from their ustads, not necessarily public appreciation or money gains."

And to end on a happy note, Sarwat Ali adds there is much scope for formally trained musicians in Pakistan. So good luck to all those aspiring to be Beethoven!

It is always a pleasure to listen to Fareeda Khanum, but particularly these days as she rarely gets an opportunity to perform in public. And this pleasure is also tinged with sadness because one is gripped by an uneasy feeling that performers like her are the last in line of a glorious tradition of music.

Her concert at the Alhamra last week was characteristic of the high quality that her singing exemplifies. She again made it evident during her performance that ghazal gaiki in Pakistan has evolved from the thumri. This integral linkage between kheyal, thumri and the ghazal now appears to be snapping as different musical sources are being tapped into.

This is clear from the response of the music shops and vendors who are likely to produce recordings of Fareeda Khanum, Medhi Hasan and Iqbal Bano's ghazals on being asked for classical music. Not so long ago, classical music only meant the genre of kheyal, while thumri and dadra fell in the category of semi-classical music. Ghazal, an autonomous form quite distinct from the thumri or dadra, was classified as light music, whether sung by Ustad Barkat Ali Khan, Ali Buksh Zahoor or Zahida Parveen. But now there are other ways of singing the ghazal and the more traditional style exemplified by Fareeda Khanum is not considered ghazal rendered in the classical ang, but classical music itself.

Fareeda Khanum initially sang the kheyal compositions in the mudh lai, and as she switched to the occasional thumri her style of ghazal singing became sharply defined. In olden times the ghazal was sung mostly in the upper register; Fareeda Khanum does sing in the upper register with full-throated ease, and then moves into the overwrought emphasis on the tonal embellishments and laikari. With Fareeda Khanum, the words remain incidental, the elaboration of the raag takes precedence.

It was a treat to listen to the compositions of Mian Meharban being sung by Fareeda Khanum. She only authenticated her credentials as being the shagird of the Patiala gharana. Mian Meharban was the shagird of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan (Karnail), the founder of the Patiala gharana, and most of the compositions which the second and third generation of Patiala gharana gaiks sang were actually the composition of Mian Meharban. At times he used his own nom the plume, but mostly attributed these to his Ustad Taan Kaptaan Fateh Ali Khan.

Mukhtar Begum was the shagird of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan, the son of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, and at times during the rendition of the classical bandishes Fareeda Khanum rendered the very complicated taans for which Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan was much applauded. The musical value of these taans lay in the fact that these were extreme examples of virtuosity.

The first great exponent of the ghazal was Gohar Jan, the leading singer of her times in Calcutta. She also has the distinction of being the first singer to have lent her voice to the new technology of recording. Her discs were the first to come out in an age when the more respected Gurus and Ustads refused to have their voices recorded for the fear of becoming commonplace.

Listening to Fareeda Khanum in this concert held last week was a treat for many reasons. She is a virtuoso in the old tradition and clearly embodies the development of the ghazal gaiki over the greater part of the century. There is a clear strand of the ang of Mukhtar Begum in her earlier phase, and as ghazal gaiki took a creative turn with Mehdi Hasan, the emphasis of her music moved to the middle and the lower register.

But the most pleasant surprise these days is that Fareeda Khanum has started to sing the classical bandishes in raags as part of her repertoire. One does not remember her singing pure classical compositions in various raags in public, which must have been part of her training during the formative stage of her life. At that time, of course, the ghazal was looked down upon as a minor form of singing, as the kheyal still reigned supreme, with some concessions grudgingly granted to light classical forms like the thumri.

Fareeda Khanum has also sung many geet, some in Punjabi, and these are more in synch with popular sentiment. These geets are surely not a true reflection of her musical ability -- such geets or numbers have been sung, and probably better, by other singers -- but Fareeda Khanum is also requested to sing these geets in public performances. At times the popular demand is so tyrannical that it pulls down her high level of performance.

This is a reminder of one strand of our musical tradition, mostly represented by the mujra ang, where the woman performer was supposed to render such numbers to the accompaniment of dance. These dance numbers were either performed by the vocalist herself or by specialised dancers. The entire spirit and atmosphere of such chamber-music activity was bonhomie and cavalierness.

The ghazal grew out of an environment where it was the preserve of the dancing girls. During the course of the last century it was given a credible autonomous musical form. It was invested with the same high seriousness as the kheyal. When the ghazal drew its inspiration from the kheyal and then the thumri, the emphasis was more on its musical aspects than on the lyrics, but with the growing popularity of the geet the temptation in the audience to revive the link between a woman performer and the mujra has been intensified. Vocalists like Fareeda Khanum are perhaps limited by this generalised expectation on part of the audience.

Alhamra has been holding programmes of music quite regularly and one by Mehnaz preceded this programme by days. It has also started a weekly music programme where aspiring artists perform outdoors on the lawns and platforms of the Alhamra. It is becoming a regular feature now, and it should be ensured that such activity is held consistently, as many good initiatives in the past at Alhamra have come to an abrupt halt for no transparent reason.

It is difficult, impossible rather, to sustain the same position in one's creative life. If you do not evolve, you are bound to regress. Yet many artists do strive to a stability in their creative pursuits. They try hard to retain the positions they have achieved in the world of art, mainly by repeating work which they have previously been admired for. But in most cases the new pieces, instead of replicating or retaining the vigour of previous art works -- reflect the desperate efforts of their makers and become substandard copies of their popular originals.

One only needs to see art from Lahore to Karachi, displayed in the exhibitions or just put on sale in the galleries, in order to confirm this phenomenon. It may be ironic, but it is true of several artists that their present work survives as a memory of their celebrated styles.

The shackles of style do not only bind older artists. Several young artists, who have seen rapid success in their initial shows, seem to be suffering from the same syndrome. Quick recognition is the best thing that can happen to a young and new artist, but at the same time it poses a challenge.

The urge to adhere to a 'safe' style is the cause of the deterioration of our art in general. The reluctance to change might seem logical in a painter well advanced in years (though not justified), but when a young artist sports the same attitude it becomes a matter of great concern.

This tendency to get entangled in style was observed in the new works of Wasim Ahmed, which were put out for a preview in Lahore before they appear in his solo exhibition in New Delhi, due to start on 7th October 2006 at the Anant Art Gallery. In this body of work, Wasim has displayed miniatures painted around a theme he has dealt with in his earlier works too. The new paintings are constructed around a simple and exhausted visual scheme: naked females -- derived from Western art works, wrapped in burqas. In his previous works, this subject alluded to our custom of clothing every foreign element and converting it into a local sign. At the same instant it signified the streak of religiosity which insists in covering images of beauty. Yet Wasim suggested the futility and failure of these causes by making the veil into a thin and transparent fabric which covers the body but it is unable to hide it.

These were unusual ways of dealing with formal and conceptual issues at hand. The simplicity in composition as well as the skill in portraying figurative elements marked Wasim's clarity of idea and purity of expression. In the new works the same subject is attempted, but Wasim has now filled pictorial spaces with all kinds of effects. Dark clouds and washes of paint, plans of a house, sections of landscape and texture of calligraphy are added in. In some paintings the shuttlecock burqas are drawn like an octopus.

Actually the abundance of alphabets scattered around the figures and all around the composition -- scenes of looming clouds and hints of a built structure -- reveal the painter's desire to introduce something new in his art. But at the same time he is so much attached to his 'reliable' set of images that the new additions seem like pastiche.

Some time ago, Wasim experimented in painting differently, but soon gave it up in favour of his 'signature' style. Now his female figures have become something of a trademark. In this he is not unique, because many artists are aiming for the same thing again and again, without realising that it is impossible to recreate one's older work unless one is a trained forger.